Gene Tanta was born in Timisoara, Romania and lived there until 1984, when his family immigrated to the United States. Since then, he has lived in DeKalb, Iowa City, New York, Oaxaca City, Iasi, Milwaukee, and Chicago. He is a poet, visual artist, and translator of contemporary Romanian poetry. His two poetry books are Unusual Woods (BlazeVOX 2010) and Pastoral Emergency (forthcoming). Tanta completed his MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2000 and his PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin in 2009 with literary specialization in twentieth-century American poetry, first-generation American poets, and the European Avant-garde. His journal publications include: Ploughshares, EPOCH, Circumference Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, Watchword, Columbia Poetry Review, The Laurel Review, and Drunken Boat. Currently, he is editing two anthologies of poetry while teaching literature in the American Studies Program at the University of Bucharest in Romania as a Fulbright Scholar.